Lead Scoring for Contractors With a 100-Point Sheet

Say an HVAC service department in Fort Worth scores ten buildings for a preventive-maintenance campaign. The first warehouse earns 95 points, a retail center earns 90 and an office earns 80. The scoring rules and campaign economics below are a working model to replace with your own job records.

The warehouse has six visible rooftop units and a booked survey. The retail center has five units and a request for a scoped proposal, but takes longer to reach. The office has three units and a confirmed review date. A second warehouse also scores 80; the office wins that tie because its buyer has established a timetable.

Ground Control by PorchRocket supplies the building evidence for the fit side. Add the buyer’s timing after a conversation, then route each account to the person who owns the next step.

Target building	Fit / 80	Intent / 20	Total / 100	Next action
Warehouse, 38,000 sq. ft., six RTUs	80	15	95	Hold the booked survey
Retail center, 44,000 sq. ft., five RTUs	70	20	90	Scope the requested proposal
Office, 31,000 sq. ft., three RTUs	70	10	80	Confirm the review requirements
Warehouse, 52,000 sq. ft., eight RTUs	80	0	80	Start buyer outreach
Warehouse, 19,000 sq. ft., five RTUs	60	15	75	Review the smaller account economics
Office, 27,000 sq. ft., two RTUs	60	10	70	Check service travel before a visit
Retail, 16,000 sq. ft., three RTUs	60	5	65	Review before more selling time
Medical building, 42,000 sq. ft., five RTUs	63	0	63	Check service-window requirements
Retail, 8,000 sq. ft., one RTU	40	20	60	Assess the inquiry outside this campaign
Office, 34,000 sq. ft., no RTUs	55	0	55	Exclude from the rooftop-unit campaign

Fit score vs intent score for a contractor

A contractor’s fit score measures whether the building suits the work; its intent score measures buying readiness, and I would start with an 80-to-20 split.

Physical fit starts with a system your crew services. Add the work size and location. These facts determine whether the account belongs on the list before anyone answers the phone, while a review date or permission for a survey tells the salesperson that a buyer has begun considering the work.

Keep both numbers visible. An 80-point warehouse with no conversation is an attractive prospecting assignment. A 70-point office with 10 intent points needs follow-up on an identified decision. Both total 80, but they need different tasks.

Business activity belongs in the fit calculation because the property and its use matter together. The EIA’s commercial-building overview explains how its 2018 survey organizes energy use by building activity and distinguishes the energy sources and end uses within buildings. Use those distinctions to define segments, then qualify the address itself.

I would give an email open zero points. A buyer saying the service agreement comes up for review in February earns attention. Do not let a series of passive interactions accumulate enough points to outrank a suitable building with a scheduled survey.

Write the ideal customer profile for your contracting business before choosing weights. It should state what the crew can serve profitably, including the work you would decline. The fit-data and intent-data comparison develops the distinction for a broader prospecting program.

The 100-point contractor lead scoring sheet

Use four physical-fit factors worth 80 points and one buyer-intent ladder worth 20, assigning only the highest supported intent level to each building.

This HVAC sheet favors a department selling planned rooftop maintenance to warehouses or similar commercial properties. Emergency calls stay with dispatch. When a suitable owner calls about a failed unit, handle that immediate request through the normal service process while the salesperson checks whether the building also belongs in a longer-term agreement campaign.

Scoring field	Points available	Rule for this HVAC campaign	Evidence to retain
Visible rooftop equipment	25	Five or more units: 25; two to four: 15; one: 5; none: 0	Property match reason or reviewed observation
Building size	20	25,000 to 100,000 sq. ft.: 20; 10,000 to 24,999 or 100,001 to 150,000: 10; otherwise: 0	Property record and size field
Travel from the nearest existing service stop	20	Up to 20 driving minutes: 20; over 20 through 35: 10; over 35: 0	Route check for the expected service window
Business and service-pattern fit	15	Warehouse, office or retail: 15; medical or hotel: 8 pending coverage review; otherwise: 0	Business type and service requirements
Buyer intent	20	No response: 0; positive response: 5; confirmed review within 12 months: 10; booked survey: 15; scoped proposal requested: 20	Dated conversation and agreed next step

Add the first four fields for fit, then add intent for the total. Use one intent level per building. A buyer who replies and later books a survey moves to 15 points; the earlier response points are replaced. Do not stack them.

The opening warehouse gets 25 + 20 + 20 + 15 = 80 fit points, using an 18-minute trip. Its survey adds 15. The retail center’s 26-minute trip reduces travel points to 10: 25 + 20 + 10 + 15 + 20 = 90. The office’s 17-minute trip gives 15 + 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 = 80.

The remaining rows use the same buckets. Their travel times, in table order after the office, are 19, 22, 32, 16, 27, 16 and 18 minutes. The medical building earns 25 + 20 + 10 + 8 = 63 because its service requirements need review. The office without rooftop units still totals 55, but fails the required-system check and gets no outbound task.

Trade-specific weights for roofs, lots and grounds

Keep the 80-point fit budget, but move its weight toward the property features and delivery costs that determine profit for each trade.

A coating estimator needs a different list from a mowing route manager. I would start with the allocations below, using the HVAC buckets above and full, half or zero credit for the other trades’ fit factors. Write each bucket’s definition beside the sheet before scoring.

Physical-fit factor	Roofing or coating	Rooftop HVAC	Paving or sealcoating	Commercial grounds
Suitable material, system or visible asset	25	25	20	15
Work size within crew capacity	20	20	20	15
Roof age band or documented service cues	15	0	10	5
Service travel and route fit	15	20	25	30
Business use and service pattern	5	15	5	15
Total fit points	80	80	80	80
Separate buyer-intent allowance	20	20	20	20

For roofing, give full material points to your crew’s primary systems. Score the work size against your estimating and production capacity. An older membrane roof can earn age-band points for an assessment campaign; the proposed scope comes from roof records and inspection. The Colorado Roofing Association’s asset-management guidance describes inspection reports and maintenance documentation as parts of that process.

For HVAC, the equipment row measures service opportunity. Equipment age stays out of this pre-call sheet. At the survey, compare the asset register with the equipment and build the scope from its maintenance requirements, following the manufacturer-specific instructions referenced in the National Laboratory of the Rockies’ RTU maintenance guide.

For paving, visible paved parking qualifies the asset. Measure the asphalt area during takeoff or the site visit, then score job size. Leave service-cue points pending until an inspection or buyer record supports the work. A parking-area match alone does not earn those points.

For grounds, start with visible lawns or planting beds. Check how much area needs maintenance and when the crew can enter. Travel earns 30 points because this campaign fills an existing route, so use the route-density worksheet to check the minutes available between stops before awarding full location credit to a nearby property.

Define partial credit before the rep sees the address. For the grounds travel factor, use the HVAC travel bands: up to 20 minutes earns 30 points, over 20 through 35 earns 15, and over 35 earns zero. For roofing material, give 25 points to your primary system and 12.5 to a secondary system you support. An unsupported system earns zero and triggers exclusion. Keep the half points; rounding each field changes the weights. Unknown material stays pending until the record or survey establishes it.

Set the weights from your own wins and losses

I would start with 30 resolved opportunities if available, comparing gross profit and selling hours across fit factors before changing the starting weights.

Include declined estimates and jobs lost to another proposal. Add no-decisions as their own category. If fewer than 30 have resolved, review all of them and keep the starting weights until the next batch provides more evidence. A sheet trained only on signed work cannot show how much effort went into accounts that never bought.

Record what was knowable before the first call. A model can appear accurate when it awards points for information learned after the sale, which is why the first-call evidence belongs in a separate record from survey findings or the costs recorded after the crew finishes.

Compare similar campaigns. A referral to an existing owner and cold outreach to an unfamiliar warehouse have different starting advantages. Separate service agreements from replacement projects, and split territories when travel or staffing changes the economics.

For each bucket, calculate accounts won divided by resolved opportunities. Then divide gross profit by the sales hours spent on all those opportunities, including the losses, so a segment that signs readily but absorbs unpaid estimating nights does not automatically earn more attention than a segment requiring fewer quotes.

Watch for overlapping rewards. Large buildings and higher unit counts can describe much of the same opportunity. Keep both only if they improve your decisions independently. Test a five-point shift from size to travel against the old rankings before adopting it.

I would change one factor per review. Preserve the old score, apply the revision to the next batch and compare results after the opportunities have had time to resolve. Leave a note explaining the change, such as excessive windshield time on otherwise attractive service accounts.

Which scores go to sales, research or a later date?

Start outbound work at 65 fit points, move suitable accounts with at least 10 intent points into active follow-up, and apply exclusion rules before either threshold.

Use the totals to rank accounts within each sales queue. Use the subtotals to decide which queue they enter. Apply the table after checking exclusions and missing evidence; a missing required-system field goes to research before any score threshold applies.

Qualification and score	Assignment	Initial service standard	Condition for the next move
Fit 65 or higher; intent 10 to 20	Active sales owner	Contact within one business day or honor the booked appointment	Agreed scope, buyer and next date
Fit 65 or higher; intent 0 to 5	Outbound salesperson	Begin outreach within five business days	Buyer confirms a review or survey
Fit 50 to 64	Research or manager review	Spend up to 15 minutes checking the weak field	Corrected evidence or approved account economics
Fit below 50	Outside this outbound campaign	Handle inbound inquiries through normal qualification	A different service offer fits
Required system absent or another exclusion applies	Suppressed from this campaign	Record the reason immediately	Evidence resolves the exclusion

A high intent score cannot reverse an exclusion. The office without RTUs is outside this rooftop campaign despite its size and location. Missing information goes into research; a confirmed mismatch goes into suppression. Those are different dispositions.

Track confirmed points plus unresolved points as the highest possible fit score. A building with 45 confirmed points and 25 pending could reach 70, so research it before applying the below-50 rule. If a required field remains unknown after the 15-minute research allowance, park the record with a question and review date. Release it when the evidence arrives.

Write a few exclusions before ordering the list: outside the service territory, a system the crew does not support, an existing account assigned elsewhere or a duplicate building. Apply contact restrictions before generating outreach tasks. A replacement quote also needs available estimating capacity.

Budget and authority belong in the sales conversation. Ask who approves the agreement, what work is being reviewed, when the decision happens and what existing scope the proposal must address. Record an unanswered question as pending. An identified owner contact earns access, while a dated buying step earns intent.

Use Ground Control match reasons as scoring inputs

Map each Ground Control match reason to one fit field, record your review date, and let your worksheet calculate points under your own rules.

Start with buildings with rooftop HVAC for the maintenance campaign. Choose the service area, business types and building-size bands, plus the 2+ or 5+ visible-unit requirement that fits the offer. A match for 5+ units earns the sheet’s top equipment bucket without requiring an exact unit count.

A 2+ match establishes at least 15 equipment points. It does not establish a ceiling of four units. Leave the additional 10 points unresolved until a reviewed observation or buyer equipment record confirms whether the property reaches five.

Use commercial roof target lists for a roofing campaign, with roof material, size and a 10+ age band where appropriate. For the paving version, properties with paved parking areas supply the asset-presence input. Your measured takeoff fills the work-size field later.

Keep match evidence separate from points. A column saying five or more visible rooftop units should feed the equipment bucket once. Score business use from its own evidence; awarding extra size or industrial-use points for the equipment observation would reward the same finding several times.

Keep unknowns visible too. An unknown field earns zero points pending review. Record how many fit points remain unresolved; stretching the known fields to fill the gap would make an incomplete record look like an 80-point account, even though the salesperson still lacks evidence needed to assign the next task.

Ground Control sends CSV and Excel files. Owner information and decision-maker research are add-ons, with a named person’s role and contact details where found. Buyer access still needs to be established in the outreach record. The commercial prospect-list guide covers the fields to collect before assignment.

An owner with several fitting buildings deserves a linked account record. Score each site independently, then assign one person to coordinate the portfolio conversation. Do not award every site maximum intent because the buyer asked about one address.

A spreadsheet that keeps buildings and buyers separate

Maintain one row per building, link buildings to a buyer account, and preserve separate fit, intent and qualification fields when the list loads into your CRM.

At minimum, keep a building identifier, address, service type, source observation, observation date, each factor’s points, fit subtotal, intent subtotal, total, exclusion status, assigned person and next-action date. Add a scoring-version field. That gives a manager enough information to reconstruct a disputed priority.

Store the buyer’s role and buying scope on the linked account or contact record. Ask who controls the agreement. The person responsible for a tenant’s interior maintenance may need to refer a rooftop-service inquiry to the owner or property manager, so establish responsibility for the proposed work before counting the conversation as qualified progress.

The Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns glossary defines an establishment as a location where business is conducted and distinguishes it from an enterprise that can have several establishments. An establishment count is not a count of buyers responsible for rooftop maintenance. Build the outreach queue from checked property records and establish who controls the service agreement.

Deduplicate before scoring. Two tenants at one street address should not automatically generate two rooftop surveys. Preserve separate buildings at a campus when their equipment and service requirements differ, then join them under the buyer responsible for the campus.

A spreadsheet formula can add the fit fields and intent points, but qualification status should govern whether a task is created. Sort the active-sales queue separately from the outbound queue. Put an expired buyer date into a follow-up task rather than leaving last quarter’s intent points untouched.

For wider account outreach, use the account-based marketing playbook for contractors. Its account tiers decide how much effort to spend; the property score explains which buildings deserve that effort first.

What scored targeting is worth in sales hours

In the 120-building campaign, better fit supports two signed maintenance accounts from the same 70 selling hours that the broad-address version uses for one.

The campaign budgets $46 per selling hour, including research and estimating time, and buys the targeted list at $15 per building within Ground Control’s commercial range. Allow $280 for sales travel and campaign supplies. Contact research uses the hour budget. Purchased add-ons would be separate cost lines.

Campaign measure	Broad address selection	Buildings selected and ranked for fit
Buildings approached	120	120
Total selling hours	70	70
Buyer conversations	16	30
Site surveys	4	10
Proposals	3	8
Signed agreements	1	2
Signed accounts per 70 hours	1	2

The targeted funnel assumes a 25% conversation rate, a one-third survey rate from those conversations, an 80% proposal rate from surveys and a 25% signing rate from proposals. That produces 30 conversations, ten surveys, eight proposals and two wins: a rounded 1.67% signing rate across the list. The broad selection produces 16 conversations, four surveys, three proposals and one win, or 0.83% overall.

Allocate the targeted 70 hours as 26 for research and outreach, 20 for ten surveys including travel, 16 for eight proposals and eight for follow-up. The broad version uses 48 for research and outreach, eight for four surveys, six for three proposals and eight for follow-up. Both assume two hours per survey and two per proposal. The targeted list frees 22 research hours for six more surveys and five more proposals. This budget assumes nearby buildings and a repeatable maintenance scope.

Reserve the survey hours before the campaign starts. Calling can be efficient while estimating becomes the bottleneck. If eight proposals exceed capacity, slow the outbound queue or increase the threshold temporarily. Keep buyer commitments already made.

Service travel also belongs in account fit. The Department of Labor’s hours-worked guidance says travel between job sites during the workday counts as work time. Charge those field minutes to delivery costs when comparing the profit of nearby and distant accounts.

The SBA’s marketing and sales guidance recommends tracking campaign costs against generated revenue. For this decision, take the comparison through gross profit and selling hours. Revenue alone would reward an account whose extra travel consumes the margin.

Lead-list ROI under low, base and high results

Two signed accounts generate about $46,230 in renewal-adjusted five-year gross profit against $5,300 in acquisition costs, giving the base campaign about 772% ROI.

Assume each agreement bills $17,400 annually for ten RTUs, with four planned maintenance visits, filter changes and an agreed coil-cleaning scope. Repairs and replacements are excluded from projected revenue. Direct field costs leave a 38% gross margin, or $17,400 × 0.38 = $6,612 per account in year one.

Gross profit subtracts the costs of delivering the service before marketing and office expenses, following the distinction in the SEC’s financial-statement guide. Keep acquisition spending outside the service margin. Otherwise the same selling hours could reduce both the account value and the campaign return when they belong in the acquisition budget once.

The acquisition budget is 120 × $15 + 70 × $46 + $280 = $5,300. At two wins, customer acquisition cost, or CAC, is $5,300 ÷ 2 = $2,650.

Customer lifetime value here means renewal-adjusted gross profit over five years. At 82% annual retention, calculate $6,612 × (1 + 0.82 + 0.82² + 0.82³ + 0.82⁴), or about $23,115 per account. Multiply the unrounded value by two for campaign gross profit of $46,230, rounded. Assume a full first service year and renewals at each anniversary; lost accounts are not replaced. Prices and margins stay flat. There is no discounting or additional renewal-selling expense. Round only the final displayed totals and percentages.

Lead-list ROI equals account gross profit over the chosen period, minus list and outreach costs, divided by those costs. The base calculation is ($46,230 - $5,300) ÷ $5,300, or about 772%.

Five-year campaign measure	Low	Base	High
Wins from 120 buildings	1	2	3
Overall signing rate	0.83%	1.67%	2.50%
Annual retention	75%	82%	88%
Five-year gross profit per account	$20,172	$23,115	$26,022
Gross profit from all wins	$20,172	$46,230	$78,066
List and outreach costs	$5,300	$5,300	$5,300
Five-year ROI after acquisition costs	281%	772%	1,373%
First-year ROI after acquisition costs	25%	150%	274%

The base gross profit is about 25.7 times the $1,800 list invoice, or 8.7 times the full campaign cost before subtracting that cost. Keep those measures labeled. A list-only multiple and an all-in ROI answer different questions.

CAC payback is $2,650 ÷ ($6,612 ÷ 12), about 4.8 service months. That measures gross-profit recovery after service begins; payment dates determine cash recovery. One agreement covers the $5,300 campaign from its $6,612 first-year gross profit. Zero wins leaves the campaign $5,300 down.

I would expand after checking delivered margin against the signed scope. Check the calendar too. Use the lead-list ROI calculator to change the inputs, and the lead-list return guide for the broader money framework.

How to score contractor leads, step by step

Run an eight-step, 30-day setup to qualify the first batch of buildings and assign sales work before changing the scoring rules.

1. Days 1 and 2: define one offer. Choose rooftop maintenance, a membrane inspection campaign or another service with a known crew and margin target. Write the territory, minimum work size and exclusions on one page.
2. Days 3 and 4: inspect the job history. Review resolved opportunities, including losses and declined estimates. Record the property facts known before outreach, selling hours and delivered gross profit where available.
3. Day 5: order the fitting buildings. In Ground Control, select your area, building-size band and business types, with 5+ visible rooftop units for this HVAC campaign. Commercial records cost $10 to $20 per building; the file arrives within 48 hours after payment.
4. Days 6 through 8: prepare the sheet. Deduplicate buildings, preserve every match reason and check driving minutes. Apply the four fit factors, recording unknowns instead of filling them with guesses.
5. Days 9 and 10: assign the queues. Send fit scores of 65 or more to outbound work, pending fields to review and exclusions to suppression. Give each building one salesperson and a next-action date.
6. Days 11 through 20: establish buyer timing. Ask who approves the work and when the agreement is reviewed. Use the highest supported intent stage, then assign surveys only when fit and the buying step justify them.
7. Days 21 through 25: check the time budget. Compare buyer conversations and proposals with the 70-hour campaign allowance. Include unsuccessful research and estimating time. Preserve the original scores for later comparison.
8. Days 26 through 30: review the first decisions. Examine skipped suitable accounts and unsuitable surveys. Fix record errors immediately, then keep the weight version stable until the 90-day review supplies more resolved opportunities.

Keep the score visible beside the next action during the sales meeting. A manager should be able to pick any row and see why it outranks the one beneath it. Resolve evidence disputes before rewarding reps for working only the highest totals.

Audit the score after 90 days

At 90 days, compare each starting score band on buyer access, surveys, signed work and gross profit per selling hour before approving another campaign.

Retain the whole original batch. Removing unreachable buildings from the denominator would make the score look better while concealing a contact problem. Keep open estimates separate from resolved losses and report the same measurement date for every score band.

Check the accounts sales skipped. If suitable buildings with no initial intent never received outreach, the routing process prevented the model from being tested; if high-scoring properties repeatedly fail at the survey, inspect the field that made them look suitable before anyone visited.

Listen to operations after the first jobs. Compare estimated travel with the service route and compare promised access with the technician’s experience. A property can deserve fewer points on the next campaign because servicing it takes longer than the estimate allowed.

For a trade serving public buildings, keep a separate opportunity queue in Bid Control by PorchRocket. Cities, counties and school districts buy work through posted requirements and deadlines. Bid Control brings the bid papers and addenda together; qualify the specific procurement before assigning estimating time.

Preserve that separation in reporting. One successful school agreement should not inflate the close rate of a private-building outreach campaign. The next score revision should show which property factors and sales actions earned their place in the process.

Ordering a target list for your score in Ground Control

Ground Control by PorchRocket is the fastest way to assemble contractor lead-scoring inputs using territory, building size, business type and visible rooftop HVAC, roof material or paved parking. Commercial records cost $10 to $20 per building and arrive within 48 hours after payment, often sooner. Every property says why it matched. Report a wrong match within 30 days for credit back. Owner information and decision-maker research are separately priced add-ons. These are target buildings for your team to approach; the owners have not asked for a quote.

Start with the Ground Control list order and keep the first selection narrow enough to compare with your job history. Orders start at ten buildings, and you see the exact price before paying. For the rooftop-maintenance worksheet, specify the following:

• The territory your service department can cover, using the area around existing stops.
• The building-size band and business types appropriate for the agreement you sell.
• A 2+ or 5+ visible rooftop-unit requirement, with the matching reason retained in the file.
• Owner information or decision-maker research where your team needs that extra work.
• A CSV or Excel file to load into the scoring sheet and then into your sales system.
• A named salesperson who adds buyer timing and assigns the next step after reviewing the property inputs.

Put suitable buildings first, and give each one a selling task your team can finish.